Chapter 19

The time will come when matters of trade in the large shall be conducted nationally and municipally. The business of man is to produce something. The man who produces nothing, but who sits in the midst of other men's goods, offering them for sale at a price greater than he paid, such a man moves in the midst of a badly-lit district of many pitfalls. It is the same with a man at a desk, before whom pass many papers representing transactions of merchandise and whose business it is to take a proprietary bite out of each. He develops a perverted look at life, and a bad bill of moral health. There is no exception to this, though he conduct a weekly bible lesson for the young, even move his chair to a church every seventh day.

The drama of the trade mind is yet to be written. It is a sordid story; the figure at the last is in no way heroic. It would not be a popular story if done well.

The time is not far off, except to those whose eyes are dim, when countries will be Fatherlands in the true sense--in the sense of realising that the real estate is not bounded land, vaulted gold, not even electrified matter, but the youth of the land. Such is the treasure of the Fatherland. The development of youth is the first work of man; the highest ideal may be answered first hand. Also through the development of the young, the father best puts on his own wisdom and rectitude.

The ideal of education has already been reversed at the bottom. There is pandemonium yet; there is colossal stupidity yet, but Order is coming in. It would be well for all men meditatively to regard a kindergarten in action. Here are children free in the midst of objects designed to supply a great variety of attractions. There is that _hum_ in the room. It is not dissonance. The child is encouraged to be himself and express himself; never to impinge upon his neighbour's rights, but to lose himself in the objects that draw him most deeply.

I have mentioned the man who caught the spiritual dream of all this, who worked it out in life and books. One of his books was published nearly a hundred years ago. It wasn't a book on kindergarten, but on the education of man. I have not read this of Froebel's work. I wanted to do these studies my own way, but I know from what I have seen of kindergartens, and what teachers of kindergartens have told me, that the work is true--that "The Education of Man" is a true book. Nor would it have lived a hundred years otherwise.

The child is now sent to kindergarten and for a year is truly taught. The process is not a filling of brain, but an encouragement of the deeper powers, their organisation and direction. At the end of the year, the child is sent into the first grade, where the barbaric process of competitive education and brain-cramming is carried on as sincerely as it was in Froebel's time.... A kindergarten teacher told me in that low intense way, which speaks of many tears exhausted:

"I dare not look into the first-grade rooms. We have done so differently by them through the first year. When the little ones leave us, they are wide open and helpless. They are taken from a warm bath to a cold blast. Their little faces change in a few days. Do you know the ones that stand the change best? The commoner children, the clever and hard-headed children. The little dreamers--the sensitive ones--are hurt and altered for the worse. Their manner changes to me, when I see them outside. You do not know how we have suffered."

Some of the greatest teachers in America to-day are the kindergarten teachers; not that they are especially chosen for quality, but because they have touched reality in teaching. They have seen, even in the very little ones, that response which is deeper than brain. If the great ideal that is carried out through their first year were continued through seven years, the generation thus directed would meet life with serenity and without greed. They would make over the world into a finer place to be.

* * * * *

I wonder if I may dare to say it once more?... It came this way in Chapel just a few days ago. There was a pencil in my hand, and something of man's ideal performance here below appeared more than ever clearly. I am putting down the picture, much as it came then, for the straightest way to write anything is as you would tell it:

"... This pencil is a man, any man. Above is spirit; below matter. The world of spirit is finished. The plan is already thought out there, to the utmost detail. This above is the Breath, the Conception, the Emanation, the Dream, the Universal Energy--philosophers have called it by many names, but they mean the God-Idea wrought of necessity in Spirit, since God is spirit.

"The world of matter below is not finished. Certain parts are completed, but not all, and the assembly of parts is just begun. The material world is lost in the making of parts, forgetting that the plan is one--that the parts of matter must be assembled into a whole--that a replica must be made in matter of the one great spiritual Conception. So long as men are identified with parts, there is dissonance from the shops of earth, a pulling apart instead of together.

"The many are almost ready to grasp the great unifying conception. This is the next step for the human family as a whole; this the present planetary brooding. Much we have suffered from identifying ourselves with parts. Rivalries, boundaries, jealousies, wars--all have to do with the making of parts. Beauty, harmony, peace and brotherhood have to do with the assembly of parts into one. That which is good for the many is good for the one; and that which is good for the one is good for the many--_the instant_ we leave the part and conceive the whole.

"All the high-range voices for hundreds of years have proclaimed that the plan is one. The world to-day is roused with the Unifiers--voices of men in every city and plain crying out that we are all one in aim and meaning, that the instruments are tuned, the orchestra ready, the music in place--but the players, alas, lost as yet in frenzy for their own little parts. The baton of the leader is lifted, but they do not hear. In their self-promulgation they have not yet turned as one to the conductor's eyes. The dissonance is at its highest, yet the hour has struck for the lift of harmony.

"Look again at the pencil that stands for man. Above is the spiritual plan all finished. Every invention, every song and poem and heroism to be, is there. One by one for ages, the aspiring intelligence of man has touched and taken down the parts of this spiritual plan, forced the parts into matter, making his dream come true. Thus have come into the world our treasures. We preserve them--every gift from a spiritual source. Often we preserve them (until they are fully understood) against our will. The mere matter-models break down and are lost, for matter changes endlessly until it is immortalised, as our bodies must be through the refinement of spiritual union.

"Our pioneers, by suffering and labour, even by fasting and prayer, have made themselves fine enough to contact some little part of that finished plan. They have lowered it into matter for us to see--step by step--the song into notes, the poem into words, the angel into paint or stone; and the saints have touched dreams of great service, bringing down the pictures of the dream somehow in matter--and their own bodies often to martyrdom....

"Below the pencil is the world of matter, at this hour of its highest disorganisation. The very terror and chaos of the world is an inspiration to every unifying voice. Here below are already many parts; above, the plan as a whole and the missing parts. Man stands between--the first creature to realise that there is an above, as well as a below. All creatures beneath man are driven; they look down. Man alone has looked up; man has raised himself erect and may take what he will from the spiritual source to electrify his progress. Man becomes significant the moment he realises that the plan is not for self, but for the race; not for the part, but for the whole.

"I have written it in many different ways, and told it in many more. There are endless analogies. Thousands before me have written and sung and told the same. It is the great Story. We see it working out even in these wrecking days. The plan is already in the souls of men.... And what has this to do with education?

"Everything. The brain sees but the part. The development of brain will never bring to child or man the conception of the spiritual plan. There is a man to come for every missing part. Each man, as he develops, is more and more a specialist. These missing parts shall be taken down from spirit and put into matter by men whose intrinsic gifts are developed to contact them. Thus have come the great poems and inventions so far, the splendid sacrifices of men, and all renunciation for the healing of the nations.

"I would first find the work for the child. The finer the child the easier this part of the task. Then I would develop the child to turn to a spiritual source for his inspiration--his expectation to a spiritual source for every good and perfect thing. The dream is there; the other half of the circle is to produce the dream in matter.

* * * * *

"Education is thus religion--but not the man-idea of religion. It has nothing to do with creeds or cults, with affirmations or observances. It has to do with establishing connection with the sources of power, and bringing the energy down into the performance of constructive work in matter. Religion isn't a feeling of piety or devoutness; it is action. Spirituality is intellect inspired.

"The mountain is broad at the base only. There are many paths upward. These paths are far apart only at the base. On the shoulder of the mountain we hear the voices of those who have taken the other paths. Still higher, we meet. The Apex is a point; the plan is one.

"I would teach the young mind to find his own voice, his own part, his own message. It is there above him. True training is the refinement, the preparing of a surface fine enough to receive his part. That is the inspiration. The out-breath--the right hand of the process--is action, making a model in matter of the thing received.

"All training that does not encourage the child to look into the Unseen for his power, not only holds, but draws him to the commonness of the herds.

"... Many men to-day can believe in angels who cannot believe in fairies; but the child who sees the changes of light in the lowliest shadows, whose fancy is filled with little figures of the conservers and colourers of nature, shall in good time see the angels--and one of that host shall come forward (which is more important and to the point) bringing a task for the child to do.

"I say to the children here: 'I do not see the things you do, and in that I am your inferior. They shut the doors upon me when I was little, not meaning to, but the world always does that. That fineness of seeing went out from my eyes, but it is so good a thing that I do not want you to lose it. And always I am ready to listen, when you tell me what you have seen.'"

THE END

BY WILL LEVINGTON COMFORT

MIDSTREAM

... A hint from the first-year's recognition of a book that was made to remain in American literature:

_Boston Transcript_: If it be extravagance, let it be so, to say that Comfort's account of his childhood has seldom been rivaled in literature. It amounts to revelation. Really the only parallels that will suggest themselves in our letters are the great ones that occur in _Huckleberry Finn_.... This man Comfort's gamut is long and he has raced its full length. One wonders whether the interest, the skill, the general worth of it, the things it has to report of all life, as well as the one life, do not entitle _Midstream_ to the very long life that is enjoyed only by the very best of books.

_San Francisco Argonaut_: Read the book. It is autobiography in its perfection. It shows more of the realities of the human being, more of god and devil in conflict, than any book of its kind.

_Springfield Republican_: It is difficult to think of any other young American who has so courageously reversed the process of writing for the "market" and so flatly insisted upon being taken, if at all, on his own terms of life and art. And now comes his frank and amazing revelation, _Midstream_, in which he captures and carries the reader on to a story of regeneration. He has come far; the question is, how much farther will he go?

Mary Fanton Roberts in _The Craftsman_: Beside the stature of this book, the ordinary novel and biography are curiously dwarfed. You read it with a poignant interest and close it with wonder, reverence and gratitude. There is something strangely touching about words so candid, and a draught of philosophy that has been pressed from such wild and bitter-sweet fruit. The message it contains is one to sink deep, penetrating and enriching whatever receptive soul it touches. This man's words are incandescent. Many of us feel that he is breathing into a language, grown trite from hackneyed usage, the inspiration of a quickened life.

Ida Gilbert Myers in _Washington Star_: Courage backs this revelation. The gift of self-searching animates it. Honesty sustains it. And Mr. Comfort's rare power to seize and deliver his vision inspires it. It is a tremendous thing--the greatest thing that this writer has yet done.

George Soule in _The Little Review_: Here is a man's life laid absolutely bare. A direct, big thing, so simple that almost no one has done it before--this Mr. Comfort has dared. People who are made uncomfortable by intimate grasp of anything, to whom reserve is more important than truth--these will not read _Midstream_ through, but others will emerge from the book with a sense of the absolute nobility of Mr. Comfort's frankness.

Edwin Markham in _Hearst's Magazine_: Will Levington Comfort, a novelist of distinction, has given us a book alive with human interest, with passionate sincerity, and with all the power of his despotism over words. He has been a wandering foot--familiar with many strands; he has known shame and sorrow and striving; he has won to serene heights. He tells it all without vaunt, relating his experience to the large meanings of life for all men, to the mystic currents behind life, out of which we come, to whose great deep we return.

_12mo., Net, $1.25_

+-------------------------------------------------+ | Transcriber's Note: | | | | Typographical errors corrected in the text: | | | | Page 59 Ile changed to He | | Page 81 quiesence changed to quiescence | | Page 132 blurr changed to blur | | Page 161 unforgetable changed to unforgettable | | Page 243 became changed to become | | Page 261 spirtual changed to spiritual | | Page 262 posessions changed to possessions | | Page 285 apear changed to appear | | Page 287 blossome changed to blossoms | | Page 288 enviroment changed to environment | +-------------------------------------------------+

End of Project Gutenberg's Child and Country, by Will Levington Comfort